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Category Archives: Commemorations

On Thursday, 6 April 2017, I shall be presenting a paper in Arras, at the Université d’Artois, as part of an Edward Thomas Centenary Conference. I shall be speaking on Gurney and the influence of Thomas’s poetry on his work and ideas. The date of the conference is a significant one: not only does it occur just a couple of days before the centenary of Thomas’s death at Arras; the 6th April marks the centenary of the advance on Bihécourt from Vermand, 40 miles south of Arras, in which Gurney was involved and was wounded. That day in 1917, Good Friday, he was shot in the arm, clean ‘through-and-through’, and — if his later writing is to be believed — he feared not for his life, but for his piano playing, raining curses upon Fritz for the blighting of English music in his being wounded.

The advance on Bihécourt is likely the event depicted by Gurney in his justly famous poem ‘The Silent One’. The bombardment prior to their advance should have cut through the wires so that they could advance unhindered on the village, but the wires were unbroken. A ‘noble fool, faithful to his stripes’ stepped over ‘and ended.’

‘Do you think you might crawl through, there; there’s a hole;’ In the afraid
Darkness, shot at; I smiled, as politely replied —
‘I’m afraid not, Sir.’ There was no hole, no way to be seen.
Nothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes’

Glancing briefly at the map, my train journey will take me through and close to so many places that Gurney knew. It is sad that I won’t have time and opportunity to venture further afield than Arras to take in some of those places I am writing about at present. Even so: it will be poignant indeed to be speaking of Gurney on the exact centenary of his wounding, and on Thomas, just a few days shy of the centenary of his loss, and as close as can be to the place of that loss and where he now lies.

In Memoriam (Easter 1915)

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.

Today marks the centenary of the death of one of British music’s too-long-overshadowed figures: the composer, critic and pianist, William Denis Browne. Born in Leamington Spa in November 1888, Denis attended Rugby School, where he met Rupert Brooke, whom he followed to Cambridge — Brooke to King’s College; Denis to Clare, where he served as organ scholar. They knew each other well, and together became part of Edward Marsh’s circle, Marsh arranging ultimately for Brooke and Browne to serve together in the Hood Battalion of the Royal Naval Division, in which they were together dispatched for Gallipoli in 1915, neither of them to return home again.

At Cambridge, Denis Browne became one of Edward Dent’s most important protégés. Dent, who knew both Brooke and Browne, believed Denis to be every bit the worth of the now much lauded Rupert Brooke, but that he was too honest an artist to have wanted the sometimes blind attention that Brooke attracted even from the first announcement of his death. Dent therefore refrained from pushing him into an uncritical limelight, and waited a few years before seeking to make his work more widely known. Today, he is still little know, his reputation standing on just a few songs — a few of the eleven he completed. One of these is one of the masterpieces of English song, and has gone on to become one of the most influential songs of the century: To Gratiana Dancing andSinging.

There is no doubt that, had he survived, he would have been one of the key players in 20th Century British music. As a performer and critic, he was embracing the work of the modernists — Scriabin, Berg and Schoenberg — and was starting to introduce some of those ideas into his own music. He worked with Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and some of the most notable singers of his day. His was a truly remarkable genius, and was unquestionably the greatest loss to British music of the First World War.

In his pocket book he left a modest note to be passed on to Edward Dent in the event of his death:

It’s odd being dead. Rupert’s gone too, so there’s no reason why I should mind; and at any rate I’ve had a run for my money, and he was stolen unfairly before a shot was fired. There will be no-one to give me such a jolly funeral as I gave him, which is a pity.

Think of me sometimes.

WDB

In honour of this centenary, I have put up on my website an article I wrote on WDB some years ago, which I hope might be of some interest, and I will be posting some scores and a selection of his other writings. That page is here: http://www.philiplancaster.com/r/wdbrowne.htm

If you do nothing else today, try to seek out either To Gratiana Dancing and Singing or his truly remarkable and unique last song, Arabia. Both are available for download for a matter of pence from Hyperion, from their wonderful War’s Embers disc (what I think to be the best performance of Gratiana on disc), or you can hear at least Gratiana on YouTube. Arabia is certainly worth the 70 pence download cost (and more!), being not, as far as I can see, available for free from anywhere. If such artistry as is shown by singers and pianists should ever be given for free — but that is a question for another day, perhaps. Today is Denis’s day. Remember him.

A few days later, on 3 May, I am giving a recital of Gurney songs and poems, with Ben Lamb, titled ‘The Far Country’, for the Ivor Gurney Society at St.Andrew’s Church, Churchdown. Details will be available here shortly: http://www.ivorgurney.org.uk/.

Conferences

There are two major conferences taking place at the end of August and beginning of September, one on the music of the War, and one on the poetry – at both of which I am presenting papers.

The first, ‘The Music of War, 1914-1918’, runs from 29-31 August 2014 at the British Library. I will be giving a paper titled ‘Establishing the War Composer in a world of War Poets’. The conference website is at http://www.themusicofwar.org, where the conference programme will be announced in due course.

The second, ‘British Poetry of the First World War’, is the major centenary conference devoted to the poetry, organised by the English Association, and taking place at Wadham College, Oxford, 5-7 September 2014. I will be speaking on Ivor Gurney’s war poetry as a whole, including the numerous poems as yet unpublished. The conference programme is now available here: http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/english-association/ww1poetry/programme.

. . . For now, I am busy completing the editorial work on a Gurney song volume, finishing off a big funding application, finessing my poetry collection, Fulcrum, ready for press and publication in June, and otherwise trying to clear my desk in readiness for my taking up the Finzi Scholarship I was recently awarded in order to write The Passion of War (– see preceding post). This has become a very interesting year!

It can have escaped the attention of few – if any – that 2013 has marked the centenary of the birth of a figure regarded as the foremost British composer of the twentieth century, Benjamin Britten (1913-76). The centenary year has been a triumph most notably for the Britten Estate. The marketing and outreach that has either been instigated or passed through the office of the Britten Estate is second to none. I doubt even the centenaries of Mozart and Beethoven were as well represented. But the joy of Britten – who is noted particularly for his vocal works, and the vitalisation of British opera – is that he wrote numerous works specifically for young people, so schools the length and breadth of the Britain, and beyond our shores, have been able to become involved in performance of such works as Friday Afternoons and Noyes Fludde. Indeed, on Britten’s birthday itself – this coming Friday, 22 November – hundreds of simultaneous performances of Friday Afternoons will commemorate that date, with the involvement of over 100,000 children around the world, in places as far flung as America, China and Australia, not to mention 118 in Britten – sorry Britain! – alone (see here). That date also marks the beginning of Lichfield’s Britten Festival, organised by Cathedral Director of Music, Cathy Lamb: a weekend of events which begins with the coming together of pupils from several schools in Lichfield in two performances of Noyes Fludde.

The full calendar of events is follows:

Friday 22 November

3.0pm: Noyes Fludde. Cathy Lamb conducts the performance, which is being directed by the Canon Precentor, Wealands Bell, with Fran Ambrose as Noye and Ailsa Cochrane as Mrs Noye.

5.30pm: Choral Evensong, featuring Britten’s A Hymn to the Virgin.

7.30pm: Noyes Fludde (second performance).

Saturday 23 November‘s events are as follows:

5.30pm: Choral Evensong, including the Hymn to St.Columba and canticles by Henry Purcell, who was a great influence on Britten.

7.30pm: Evening Concert: Lichfield Cathedral Chamber Choir will be joined by DECO (the Darwin Ensemble Chamber Orchestra) in performances of both St. Nicholas and The Company of Heaven, conducted by Martyn Rawles.

11.0am: Choral Eucharist, including Britten’s Missa Brevis and ‘This Little Babe’ from A Ceremony of Carols;

1.0pm: Lecture by Paul Spicer: ‘Benjamin Britten: Too Original for his own good?’

3.30pm: Choral Evensong, with Britten A Hymn to St. Cecilia and another set of canticles by Purcell.

5.0pm: Recital by Yours Truly, with Ben Lamb at the piano, including Britten’s marvellous Songs and Proverbs of William Blake.

Speaking personally, it is a manically busy weekend, but is one to which I am looking forward with great excitement. I am involved in every event except for the Eucharist and Lecture on the Sunday (the Eucharist being sung by the boys’ and girls’ choirs, so the gents of the choir are not required). I am The Voice of God in Noye and one of the three readers in The Company of Heaven. However, it is the recital which is the most exciting fare of the weekend (and the one for which I am most likely to be rather weary, after all preceding services and events of the weekend!) It is not perhaps the joyful finale, but a dark, introspective look at the human condition. The recital begins with the three songs written for Ronald Duncan’s play This Way to the Tomb, which ends with the Purcellian Ground Bass of ‘Night’. There follows Britten’s realisation of Purcell’s powerful song, ‘Job’s Curse’, which sets the scene for The Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, written for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 1965. This is one of the most extraordinary works I have ever performed – one of the most difficult to learn, but by far one of the most satisfying. The programme concludes with four folksong arrangements by Britten. These are not the light froth that one might associate with the idea of folksong, but darker tales of loves lost.

A short time ago I was asked to give some thought to what might be organised for the commemoration of the forthcoming centenary of the First World War at Lichfield Cathedral. In the few days prior to a meeting with Anthony Moore, the Cathedral’s Canon Chancellor, to discuss what might be done, I had a cup of tea with Tony Piper, a visiting friend who is a Bass Lay Clerk at Southwark Cathedral. From that conversation and our ensuing discussions there arose an idea which has taken hold of both he and I, and which, as well as taking it on locally, we hope might become a national act of commemoration.

Something that I have been increasingly aware, personally, of is the anonymity of the war memorial. These stone scars upon the towns and villages of our land are there to memorialise and remind us of those who gave their lives during the First and Second World Wars, but they are but names; often they are nothing than a name. And there are so many names: There were nearly 996,000 British casualties in the First World War (not including its then colonial dependants), the sheer scale of which list means that it is unlikely that many of these names will ever find voice again. They are doomed to silence, carved into a silent stone that will in time fade and be lost as weather erodes or lichen conceals. Some may already have succumbed.

In 2012 Tony was at the opening of the Titanic Belfast visitor attraction (www.titanicbelfast.com), during the course of which opening the names of the more than 1,000 casualties of that accident were read out. However, they were not read out as a single list. They were named simultaneously: each person attending the event was given a piece of paper bearing just a few names, and at the given moment each person read out the names they had been given. You can hear this moment during that exhibition opening here.

Tony mused upon what it would be like to do the same for the First World War; whether it might be possible to give voice to those silent dead at one moment at the point of commemoration of the centenary of the Armistice, on 11 November 2018. In one roar – a great wave of sound – those who gave their lives in the war would be heard again; each and every one of them: a great cry across a century of silence. How many names would how many people need to read?

This got me thinking that, on a perhaps more practical level, why shouldn’t each and every casualty of the war be named and heard? While the mere reading of a name doesn’t provide any flesh to the body that was their being and life, it is a step beyond the silence of stone. It occurred to me that there could be a daily roll-call. The cathedrals of Britain hold services on a daily basis, during the intercessions of which are named those who are ill, have died, or whose anniversary of death occurs on that date. Why should the litany of First World War casualties not be spread across the 4 years, 3 months and 1 week period of the war’s centenary, from 4 August 2014 to 11 November 2018? This would still require the reading of some 600 or so names per day; but there are 43 Anglican dioceses in the country, not to mention the Catholic dioceses, mosques, synagogues, Quaker meeting houses, and other places of worship – not to mention whatever other public venues might join the fray (museums, galleries, libraries, concert halls?). If each diocese of the Church of England alone were to read c.10-15 names per day, during the centenary period every name would be heard. It would be impractical to read such names on the anniversary of the passing of the individual, but each and every casualty would in that period be named. The division of whatever master list is compiled for this task (the Commonwealth War Graves Commission have an exhaustive database of the grave and memorial locations for each casualty, which might, I hope, constitute most, if not all of the 996,000 British casualties! I must get in touch with them….) might be done with consideration of locality (Battalions originating within a diocese would be the logical approach), although some balancing may have to be effected upon assessment of the density of such battalions within each diocese; or Parishes, villagers, town residents across their respective diocese could seek out the names on their local war memorial and submit them to the diocese for the greater project, and also use their local memorials as the basis for their own litanies. If members of the public were to gather the names on their local monuments, then this could also feed into the War Memorials Online project, which still needs so much ‘data’.

In a centenary that is likely to come in waves, with pivotal moments and important battles being commemorated at intervals throughout the period on their respective anniversaries, a daily litany, spoken quietly across the land, would keep the commemoration of the centenary in the consciousness, but without risk of incurring what one might call ‘Remembrance Fatigue’.

But what about that roar? What about the sounding of a great wave of names, whether at the start or close of the silence on remembrance day 2018? It would be impractical to do this in one place, but it could be done across the nation. The lists used for the daily roll-call could be divided amongst the commemorations taking place at that moment up and down the country, in churches and other places of worship; at memorials or elsewhere; and at that one moment could all of those who lost their lives during the war be given a voice in a single great shout; a cry of remembrance, reminding us that they lived, and that they gave everything in the pursuit of freedom and peace. If the BBC were perhaps to undertake a simultaneous broadcast from several locations to capture some part of that roar, it might allow people to participate in the confines of their own living rooms or their places of work, and to be a part of that simultaneous litany.

Is this pie-in-the-sky? I have made the suggestion here in Lichfield, and I think it is being pursued, and there are intentions to spread the word in the hope of making it a national endeavour. But there is much work needs to be done to make it happen; indeed, it is possible that it might not happen at all – but one can try to get the wheels moving and to make it so. Tony is beginning to think about the mechanics for disseminating and dividing the names; I am trying to spread the word for the idea and get other people interested. To give the each of The Lost a voice during the centenary, however brief, is the least we can do. We must remember.

Today saw the passing of the great Irish poet, Seamus Heaney. It is only in the last couple of years that I have come to Heaney’s work, being introduced to ‘The Bog Queen’ by a friend. It was a poem that gave me some extraordinary images that stuck fast, most notably the closing idea of the woman’s plaited hair as a ‘slimy birth-cord / of bog’, which cord was cut by the turf-cutter who discovered her, precipitating her birth from the mire. As soon as I could thereafter I sought out North, which I bought in an edition which also contained his three prior collections: a great voyage of discovery to be had. Sadly, the secondhand copy slightly marred my discovery of Heaney, many of the poems being annotated, often only briefly, by the previous owner, whether by a mere tick or more effusively with sporadic very goods or fabulouses. For me, perhaps bizarrely, this mars my experience: I like to feel like I am on a private voyage of discovery and am the first to live these words. Comment from another on the page from which I am reading is too invasive. But I digress. My point is, that while I have much still to read of Heaney’s work, the place of Heaney and the originality of his voice and his portrayal of his homescape (sic), has already become apparent.

I have this evening begun to contemplate the question of the death of an artist. While Heaney’s loss undoubtedly leaves a great void for his family and friends, and secondarily for the literary world and the Irish nation in which he played a prominent part, he has left an important piece of himself behind in his work, which work will never die. In fact, as one who still has so much of Heaney to discover, being in the early stages of that path of discovery, Heaney has only recently arrived: he is still in his infancy and will, for me, grow and join me on new journeys and experiences for some years to come. Unlike so many who pass anonymously away, he remains with us, with great strength of personality and vision, and will be reborn again and again.

One of the iconic images of the First World War: Lt Ernest Brook’s photograph of a British soldier standing over a grave near Pilckem during the Third Battle of Ypres, 22 August 1917. (Imperial War Museum)

In eighteen months we will be marking the beginning of a centenary which, I suspect, will be inescapable; a centenary commemoration that will mark the period from 4 August 1914 to 11 November 1918 when we were at war with Europe’s ‘Central Powers’ – the ‘Great War’; the First World War.

With the desire – nay, the need – to commemorate these events, there has already been significant announcements about some of the undertakings being put in place, with substantial monies set aside by the UK government for commemorative projects and a major refit of the Imperial War Museum underway. There will undoubtedly be a wave of television and radio documentaries; and plans are already in place for major academic conferences such as that programmed in Oxford in September 2014 on British poetry of the First World War. One recent announcement has filled me with some degree of horror: that the Christmas Day 1914 football match in no-man’s land, when Allies and Germans set aside their differences and, in an unofficial truce, played football together, is to be recreated. The ‘recreation’ of such an iconic moment can only be (to my mind) an empty and hollow gesture that can in no way recapture the spirit in which the original was played. Such moments might be recreated in the artistic context of a film, perhaps, but it should otherwise remain a unique piece of historical iconography. The only context in which such a thing might recapture any of the ‘moment’ of the original is if perhaps those soldiers at the Israel-Palestine frontier, or similar, were to come together in such an activity.

While historical documentaries will relay some of the detail of the war, the due nobility and poignancy will undoubtedly find its voice in acts of commemoration that come from formal ceremonies, such as the Remembrance Day parades and services, and through the arts. The poetry of the First World War has become the defining voice for much of the conflict of the last century, and poetry and music, art and sculpture will play an important role in the commemorations. I know of two major commemorative commissions: a mojor work for the Three Choirs Festival titled ‘Echoes’, currently being written by the German composer Torsten Rasch (see here), and a choral symphony titled ‘Unfinished Remembering’ by Paul Spicer, to a libretto by Euan Tait.

Although the commemorations will last four years, there will undoubtedly be major landmarks within that period when the commemorations will come to the fore – particularly at the beginning and end of the period, but also the major battles within. With such a protracted timeframe I suppose we risk a waning public interest in the matter. But such a trial of endurance should be had, as was experienced by those who lived through that period. As we progress through the centenary we will already know that any hope that such commemorations will be ‘over by Christmas’ will be fruitless: its period is now set by history; we know the outcome, and we know its time-frame.

But there will always be questions from some as to why we should bother. Indeed some people may feel entirely disconnected from the First World War, where the Second is more immediately memorable and directly affected many who are still living. Following a trip to Ypres and its environs with my friend Sebastian Field, undertaken in early November 2008 as part of my research into the work of Ivor Gurney, I returned to my job as a Lay Vicar Choral with Lichfield Cathedral Choir, with whom a couple of days later I was singing for the annual Remembrance Sunday service. The proximity of the events spawned an idea for poem, which I give here merely because it seems relevant to the question in hand:

Remembrance?

Ypres fresh
Flanders mud
not yet cleaned from my shoes;
the morning shows more potent
in heart and in mind.

But who can understand
the truth of that experience?
Its joy; despair;
mundanity; insanity . . .

Wind sweeping round the cathedral
lends breath to this latest Last Post . . .
Cadets, hands clasped, seem unmoved
by this service of mummery,
acting their part with reluctance
this ceremonial morning,
as minds, like the rain,
drum a gentle retreat.

Poetry of poppies perpetuates clichés
in memoried half-truths,
but none can know the full truth of each tale,
or the million tales untold.

When I visited the Front Lines, one thing stood out for me: the architecture of memorial, for which Edwin Lutyens was in a large part responsible, and the sheer quantity of headstones, spoke louder than any poem, or music, than any documentary or book. Closer to home, almost every town and village in this country is scarred with a memorial to those who died in the First World War, often appended by those who died in the Second. These individual memorials are being recorded in a project that is perhaps long overdue, but which is perfect for the internet. However, the sheer scale and numbers of the memorials in France and Belgium is staggering; not only the British, but the allied and more austere German cemeteries also. I would tell those who don’t understand why we should remember to visit Tyne Cot (particularly at sunset), or the Canadian memorial on Vimy Ridge, or Thiepval, or any of the smaller cemeteries dotted apparently randomly in the countryside. These places are numbing, but the monumental beauty is noble and timeless. We must Remember and understand, whether through art, memorial, documentary, book or otherwise, why we are Remembering.